Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs - Chapter 375

Chapter 375: Day Review and Auction Results
The day settled on our mansion like a weighted blanket, mirroring the awkwardness that had seeped into the family fabric. We’d survived sixteen years together, a unit capable of wrestling any external force into submission. But this disturbance came from within. This time, I was the epicenter.

They couldn’t fight me. Not really. Not the one they loved most, the boy who’d grown into this unsettling presence among them.

Scratch that—it was worse. Every single one of them was fighting a primal urge, a clawing urge to simply cling to me, to anchor themselves in the eye of this strange storm swirling around their brother, their son.

I could feel it radiating from Mom, from Sarah, even from the usually detached Charlotte: a desperate, almost painful need to touch, to connect, to reassure themselves against the unnerving changes they sensed crackling in my aura. But they held back. Politeness, fear, confusion—they shackled the instinct.

Every one of them fought it. Every one, except Emma.

She didn’t fight that surge of need to be in my space. Not one bit. If anything, she embraced it, weaponized it.

When Sarah finally grabbed her backpack and departed for school, the front door clicking shut behind her felt like the firing of a starting gun. Emma emerged from the hallway, moving with a deliberate, visible limp.

“Sick,” she announced, her voice carrying just the right note of practiced weakness to Mom, who was wiping down the kitchen counter.

Mom eyed her, a flicker of concern warring with deeper, unspoken worries in her gaze, but merely nodded. “Rest, sweetie. I’ve got the late shift today.”

Emma ignored the implication that Mom wouldn’t be there to fuss over her. Her target was clear. She limped pointedly across the living room, her gait a performance that almost masked the deeper exhaustion humming beneath her skin, and collapsed onto the couch beside me.

Without a word of explanation, without asking, she folded her legs underneath her and laid her head squarely on my chest, settling in as if it were her birthright. Her breath came out in a soft sigh, and within moments, the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing deepened into sleep.

I understood the bone-deep weariness. After five relentless hours of what we’d done last night… even Emma’s formidable teenage stamina, her sheer physical resilience, had finally hit a wall.

She was human, gloriously and achingly so. And I… I was something else now. The supernatural energies coiling within me, the alien strength humming in my veins, they didn’t tire like hers. They demanded, they consumed, they changed.

Her action, seeking refuge in the solid warmth of my chest, raised no immediate eyebrows from the others either.

This was sanctuary, a familiar ritual. The twins, Sarah and Emma, had done this since childhood, seeking comfort after bad dreams or scraped knees or whatever reason they came up with to cuddle with their little brother.

Sarah had largely outgrown it, reserving such closeness for rare moments of extreme distress or unknowingly like how she’d fallen asleep on my shoulder in our old house back when I just got the system.

But for Emma? This spot had always held deeper significance.

Only, in the past, she’d cloaked it in a veil of teasing deniability. She’d drape herself over me, laughing, claiming she was “teaching me” so I “wouldn’t freeze up” if a girl ever deigned to touch me.

It was a flimsy façade, brittle even then. Yesterday, peeling back the layers of our explosive new reality, I’d finally uncovered the raw, vulnerable truth beneath the lies: this wasn’t education. This was home. This was safety. This was where she’d always longed to be.

Mom watched us for a long moment from the kitchen doorway, her expression a complex tapestry of maternal concern, bewilderment, and a flicker of that repressed urge to reach out.

She hovered, then finally sighed, quietly gathering her purse and coat for the hospital. Afternoon to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays she’s always on duty.

Sunday was her only respite.

“Okay, honey,” she murmured, more to the space around us than to Emma directly. “Call if you need anything. Love you both.” Her gaze lingered on Emma’s peaceful face nestled against me, then shifted to mine, holding a thousand unspoken questions, kissed us both before she turned and left, the door closing with a soft finality.

Silence descended, heavier now. Charlotte, perched stiffly in the armchair opposite us, hadn’t moved. She simply watched, her posture rigid, her eyes sharp and unreadable as they tracked Emma’s sleeping form, then flicked up to meet mine.

There was no judgment in her stare, not exactly. It was more… assessment. Calculated observation of this new, untenable dynamic.

We were a family fractured by an internal earthquake, the ground beneath sixteen years of shared history now shifting unpredictably. They couldn’t fight the source of the disturbance, not when it wore the face of the one they cherished. And Emma? Emma wasn’t just acknowledging the quake; she was diving headfirst into its epicenter, clinging to me not just for comfort, but as a declaration.

In the suffocating quiet of the living room, with Charlotte’s silent scrutiny burning, Emma’s head on my chest felt less like rest and more like a silent, irreversible claim staked in the heart of the gathering storm.

Around, in the afternoon, Emma stirred awake with feline grace. She stretched against my chest, then pulled me upstairs without ceremony or explanation. Shamelessly, despite Charlotte’s obvious presence, despite the lingering limp from yesterday’s marathon, she dragged me to her bedroom.

And begged. Again.

Three hours later, we emerged disheveled but satisfied. Charlotte was gone, but evidence of her departure sat accusingly on the dining table: a handwritten note in her precise script. Shameless and moral-less siblings.

Emma read it aloud, then laughed—a bright, unrepentant sound that filled the empty house with defiant joy.

“She’s just jealous,” Emma declared, crumpling the note with theatrical disdain.

The observation stung with its accuracy. Charlotte’s note carried undertones of something deeper than moral outrage—frustration, perhaps, or envy at boundaries she couldn’t cross.

As Emma dressed with deliberate slowness, I found myself thinking about Madison. Her silence had become glaring throughout this entire transformation.

She couldn’t go an hour without calling or texting before. Now? Nothing. My calls went unanswered, texts unreplied, but not left on ‘read’—the digital equivalent of being ignored rather than rejected.

I assumed she was swamped, preparing for tomorrow’s big day. The merger meeting would demand every ounce of her family’s political expertise. I pushed the concern aside, focusing on the tasks ahead.

Emma, still clinging to my arm like a vine, stayed in the car—one of Charlotte’s, left behind—while I visited Victoria, Ortega, and Anya. I informed them I’d start working next Monday, setting my schedule: evenings on weekdays, full days on weekends if required. The same schedule would apply to the Meridian Agency.

I also told them to get ready if they wanted to move in with me. Two hours and three thoroughly satisfied women later, I visited Isabella in her motel, with excitement fizzing in my veins.

She’d spoken to Sterling about the divorce proceedings. Everything would be finalized within a week, she assured me. She’d retain custody of Maya, which brought tremendous relief. One less cosmic knot to untangle from the increasingly complex web my life had become.

Tommy’s call interrupted these thoughts. Right. I’d forgotten him completely.

That morning, watching the news, the frenzy over the Quantum Tech auction had been global. Charlotte Thompson, the woman who’d just cleared her name, had sold an API to Amazon after outmaneuvering Google, Oracle, and others for a staggering $100 million.

Tommy Chen’s name and face were suddenly everywhere – the youngest, richest teenager. My name appeared too, thanks to Tommy crediting me with 10% of the API (not the 5% we’d agreed on). He’d dubbed me his “shy sidekick,” claiming I still hadn’t overcome a camera fear that made me cry during interviews when we were six – which was painfully true.

My absence cemented the image: Tommy the genius, me the awkward ghost.

Skepticism crackled, especially in Lincoln High’s chat groups where everyone knew the truth: I was the real tech mind. Jack, naturally, fanned the flames. He’d rather see Tommy as the village sheriff than me as even a slightly rich resident. His hatred had calcified since the Sofia rumors.

Another surprise? Charlotte Thompson had announced she was giving the entire $100 million to the designers – Tommy and me. Her reasoning when I asked her? We’d secured seven billion from the Miami trip; a hundred million more was irrelevant to our fortune but life-changing for Tommy and to show him our generosity rather than using him to cover my back.

I didn’t care about the cash. I craved the frenzy the auction generated, the global attention swirling around his name.

Now, with Emma beside me in Charlotte’s borrowed Audi, we drove toward Lincoln Heights’ most exclusive development. I was helping Tommy choose a mansion for himself and his mother, Ms. Chen, at one of Torres Developments’ premier locations.

He was already there waiting, along with her, probably overwhelmed by options that would have seemed impossible just days ago.

The weight of everything—family awkwardness, burgeoning power, sudden fame, complex relationships, and tomorrow’s merger meeting—settled into the quiet hum of the car’s engine.

Emma’s hand rested firmly on my thigh, a warm anchor to reality as we drove toward whatever chapter waited next.

The Taboo System had transformed more than just my capabilities. It had transformed my entire world, expanding it beyond recognition while somehow making it feel more intimately mine than ever before.